William Clay Ford, 38, addresses the news media after he became owner of the Detroit Lions in 1963. He took control two months later. / Preston Stroup/Associated Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

William Clay Ford took control of the Detroit Lions on Jan. 10, 1964. He’d bought the team two months earlier.

Ford, one of Henry Ford’s grandchildren, paid $4.5 million for the football team on what turned out to be the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Though Detroit had been home to three previous football teams — the Heralds, the Panthers and the Wolverines — the Lions didn’t arrive on the scene until 1934, when a group of investors, headed by a radio bigwig, bought the Portsmouth, Ohio, team for $7,952.08 and relocated it to the Motor City.

In 1975, the team moved to the Pontiac Silverdome (at one point, the largest air-supported domed structure on the planet), though in 2002, it returned to the city that gives it its name. Ford Field in downtown Detroit hosted Super Bowl XL in 2006, but the Lions have never played in the Super Bowl, much to the chagrin of the team’s fans.